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There was a time when education was described as the greatest equaliser. It was the bridge that carried the child of the poor into the company of kings, the ladder that lifted entire families from the valley of poverty to the mountaintop of hope. Today, that bridge is gradually collapsing under the crushing weight of policies that seem blind to the tears of ordinary Nigerians.
Nothing wounds a nation more deeply than making its children pay the price for the failures of leadership. When the cost of writing public examinations becomes another mountain for struggling families to climb, society begins to mortgage not only its future but its conscience.
Across the country are parents who wake before dawn, not because prosperity smiles upon them, but because survival demands it. They labour under the scorching sun, hawk on congested streets, till exhausted farmlands and operate businesses that barely produce enough to feed their families. For such parents, every additional financial burden feels like another stone tied around the neck of a drowning man.
The greatest tragedy is not merely the proposal to increase examination fees. The real tragedy is that millions of children had to spend anxious days wondering whether their dreams would become victims of economics rather than ability. No child preparing for life-changing examinations should have to carry such emotional burdens.
Education is not a favour from government. It is a fundamental investment in national development. Every kobo spent on educating a child returns a thousandfold in productivity, innovation, peace and national prosperity. A nation that makes education expensive eventually pays a far greater price through unemployment, crime and hopelessness.
The irony is both painful and embarrassing. Nigeria is abundantly blessed with crude oil, natural gas, vast mineral deposits, fertile agricultural land and one of the largest youthful populations on earth. Few countries possess such extraordinary natural endowments, yet millions of Nigerian children continue to struggle for what should be their basic educational rights.
Across several oil and gas-producing nations, governments devote enormous resources to subsidising or completely funding education. They recognise that the greatest wealth beneath the ground means little if the minds above it remain undeveloped. Their children walk into classrooms with confidence because their governments understand that investing in people is the highest form of nation-building.
The Nigerian child, sadly, often walks a different road. Instead of enjoying the dividends of enormous national wealth, he grows up watching his parents borrow money to pay school fees, purchase textbooks and register for examinations. He learns early in life that dreams sometimes depend more on the size of the income of a family than the size of the intelligence of someone.
What makes the situation even more heartbreaking is that many of these children are exceptionally gifted. Hidden in remote villages and crowded urban slums are future doctors, engineers, scientists, inventors, teachers, judges and presidents. Their brilliance is unquestionable, but opportunity continues to discriminate against them.
Every abandoned dream represents a national loss. Every child forced to drop out because education has become unaffordable is a potential innovator the nation may never know. Every examination missed because of financial hardship diminishes the future of Nigeria.
The true measure of a the greatness of a country is not the height of its skyscrapers or the size of its annual budget. It is how it treats the weakest among its citizens. And few are more vulnerable than children whose only crime is being born into poor homes.
It is difficult to explain why a nation blessed beyond measure still struggles to guarantee affordable education. The contradiction is painful. While nature has generously supplied Nigeria with abundant resources, too many citizens continue to live as though those blessings belong somewhere else.
Public policy should reduce hardship, not multiply it. Government exists to remove barriers standing between citizens and opportunity, not to erect new obstacles on already difficult roads.
There is something profoundly unjust about asking families already battling inflation, unemployment, rising transport costs, expensive healthcare and declining purchasing power to shoulder yet another burden in the name of national development. Development cannot be built upon the exhaustion of the poor.
The emotional scars inflicted by economic uncertainty are rarely measured. Parents silently endure sleepless nights wondering how to keep their children in school. Children quietly suppress their fears, pretending not to notice the anxiety written across the faces of their parents. Behind every unpaid school bill is a family fighting invisible battles.
No nation deliberately prospers by frustrating the aspirations of its young people. History consistently rewards countries that educate their citizens and punishes those that neglect them. Knowledge remains the most profitable natural resource any nation can develop.
The suspension of the proposed increase may have brought temporary relief, but it should provoke a much deeper national conversation. Education must never become another commodity reserved for those who can afford it. It must remain a right that every child can access regardless of family income or social status.
Imagine a Nigeria where every child, whether born in the creeks of the Niger Delta, the plains of the North, the forests of the South-West or the hills of the South-East, can pursue education without fear that poverty will interrupt the journey. That vision should not be impossible for one of the richest nations in Africa.
Our greatest oil well is not beneath the soil. It sits inside classrooms. Our most valuable gas reserve is not buried underground. It lives within the dreams of millions of young Nigerians waiting for the opportunity to shine. If those dreams are allowed to wither, no amount of crude oil revenue can compensate for what the nation has lost.
Future generations will not remember how much oil Nigeria exported or how much revenue entered government coffers. They will remember whether leaders of today invested in the minds that would inherit tomorrow.
For the Nigerian child, education should never become a privilege purchased by the highest bidder. In a nation so richly endowed by God, the classroom ought to be the one place where hope is free, dreams are protected, and every child is given an equal chance to rise. Anything less is not merely disappointing—it is a painful betrayal of a generation and a tragic misuse of abundant blessings of a nation.
